Remember When Your Phone Wasn’t Smarter than You?

So there I am, meandering around one of the local stores, kind of just looking at stuff, picking some of the stuff up and setting it back down, telling the friendly employee that 'No, I don't need any help finding something'. And then I see it.

Right there in the toy aisle. There's a young person (by the way, about 75% of the people on the planet are 'young people' to me) talking into his hand. I'm serious. He's down there in front of some transformer's or super hero's or something and he's talking into his hand. So of course I boldly go up to him and innocently ask, 'Everything OK?' He replies that he's fine, just talking to his device to make sure he gets the right gadget or gizmo.

Oh.

You see, he just talks at his mobile device and it tells him whats right and whats wrong. It's smarter than he is.

Oh.

It reminded me that younger folks today miss out on the fun of a dial phone. They miss out on the fun of a party line, of picking up the receiver and hearing the neighbor lady talking to the other neighbor lady about who was and more importantly wasn't in church on Sunday!

You see I grew up in a place and time that was real close to being Mayberry. Don't know about Mayberry? You're familiar with the famous movie director and producer Ron Howard? OK, he grew up in Mayberry.

Anyway...

Who remember's the old phone's? Ours set on a little shelf between the kitchen and the porch. And no, you couldn't select a ringtone. Our ring was 3-shorts, our neighbor was a short and a long, another neighbor was two longs and...well, I know it sounds a bit confusing but it all worked. It was, well, our Internet (perhaps just a wee bit smaller).

The young folks today miss out on all that fun. Of course, I suppose every generation misses out on some of the 'fun' of the previous generation. Gee, I never got to sit in a rumble seat, never got to hitch up the horses to plow a field, didn't get to thresh and doggone it, we never did have an outhouse to utilize in in the middle of winter.

I have to go now. I'm going to talk to my Grandkids about how rough we had it in 'our day'. I'm going to explain how we had to actually get up from the couch to change the TV channel!